A CHANCE MEETING.
The Putnam mansion, wherein the lawyer's ancestors had lived and died
for several generations, stood next to the cottage of Dr. Sanford; or
rather the two places were back to back, each facing one of the two
principal of the village streets. To reach either house from the more
distant thoroughfare, a short cut was taken across the grounds of the
other, right-of-way being conceded by mutual agreement.
People in Montfield retired early; and thus it happened that at ten
o'clock of the Friday night following the coming of grandmother Sanford
the lights were out in the doctor's cottage, and sleep was supposed to
have descended upon all the dwellers therein. Patty had not, however,
retired. A thunder-storm was slowly rising out of the west, with golden
fringes of lightning about its dark edges; and she sat at her open
window to watch its progress. The unusual restraint imposed upon her
by her lameness had made her restless; and she longed to steal out
of the house, and run races across the orchard as she had done when
a child. The sultry closeness of the night made her take a fan, with
which she did little but tap impatiently upon the window-ledge. She was
not thinking connectedly, but in a vague way unpleasant thoughts and
feelings crowded tumultuously through her brain like the crew of Comus.
Suddenly in the garden below she heard voices. A man was speaking
earnestly, but in a tone too low to be audible at the window above. A
woman answered him, the pair seeming to discuss something with much
emphasis. Her curiosity greatly excited by so unusual a circumstance,
Patty leaned out of the window to discover, if possible, who were the
speakers.
"Well, it's the Lord's will," she heard the woman's voice say. "And I,
for one, ain't a-going to run a muck agin it."
"It is Bathalina!" the listener said to herself. "Who in the world can
she be talking to?"
She leaned farther from her window, but by an unlucky movement of her
arm sent her fan fluttering down to the gravel walk below. The speakers
departed in different directions like phantoms, and Patty was left once
again to her own reflections. At first she speculated upon the possible
nature of the interview she had interrupted; then her thoughts came
back to her fan. It chanced to be one painted by an artist-cousin, and
one of which she was fond: a thunder-storm was rapidly approaching,
and the fan likely to be ruined. Her ankle was fast recovering, and
she was not long in determining to go down into the garden for her
property. With the aid of the furniture and the stair-railings she got
safely down to the side-door, cautiously unbolted it and slipped out.
The fan was only a few steps from the door, but a rolling-stone lay
in wait for the lame ankle, and gave it so severe a turn that Patty
sank down a miserable heap upon the ground. She sat there a moment to
recover herself, and then crawled back to the door-steps. Seated here,
she gazed ruefully at the fan, a white spot upon the dusky walk, and,
coddling her aching ankle in her hands, wondered how she was to regain
her room.
At that moment brisk steps sounded on the walk, approaching the spot
where she sat. A tall form defined itself amid the darkness, pausing
before her.
"Good-evening," said the voice of Tom Putnam. "Is it you, Patty?"
"Yes. It is I."
"Would it be polite to ask if you walk in your sleep?"
"I can't walk awake at any rate," she replied, half laughing and half
crying, "whatever I may do in my sleep."
"Then, you must have come here for air in your dreams."
"I came after that fan, and I've twisted my foot over again."
He restored the fan, and then seated himself at her feet on the lowest
step.
"It is fortunate I took this way home," he said coolly. "I hear that
you think I am miserly."
"What?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"I am told that you pronounce me miserly," he repeated. "I am very
sorry, for I mean to ask you to be my wife."
Instead of answering this strange declaration, Patty covered her face
with her hands and burst into tears. He laid his fingers lightly upon
her hair, smoothing it with a caressing motion. Surprise, physical
pain, anger, and love were all oddly mingled in Patty's mind. She knew
that she loved this man, and she was bitterly angry with herself for
having misjudged him. She was no less angry with him for knowing the
latter fact, of which Emily Purdy had taken care that he should not
remain ignorant. She had, too, that Amazonian repugnance to the caress
of a lover which is often inborn in strong personalities. She shook off
the lawyer's touch as if it were fire.
"I misjudged you," she said, by an angry effort controlling her tears,
"and I am not too proud to own it. Now forget it."
"Very well," he said, "it is forgotten. But your opinion is every thing
to me, for I have loved you these dozen years, Patty. I've watched you
growing up, and loved you more and more every year. I've had the words
in my mouth a hundred times; but now I am able to marry, and I ask you
to be my wife."
However cool these words may seem in black and white, they were
intense as Tom Putnam spoke them, his rich voice gathering force as he
proceeded. He was moved from that calm which Flossy Plant declared to
be an essential law of his existence. The passion he felt was too old,
too well defined, to come stammering and broken from his tongue; but
his voice trembled, and he bent forward until his hot breath touched
her cheek. He did not again attempt to caress her, but she felt that
his eyes were fixed upon her with a keenness that could almost pierce
the darkness. Still her mood was a defensive one. That she fought
against herself no less than against him, only added strength to her
determination not to yield.
"You had little faith in the depth of my love," she said at last, after
a silence which seemed to both very long, "if you thought I should be
afraid of poverty with you."
"Then you do love me!" he exclaimed, in joyous, vibrating tones.
"I did not say so," she retorted quickly. "I was talking of your
feelings, not mine."
"I had no right to ask you to share poverty," he said. "I loved you too
well to do it."
"That is because you looked only at your own side," she persisted. "If
I loved a man, I should be glad if he were poor. I should delight to
show him that I loved him better than any thing money would buy. Oh! I
should be proud and glad to work for him if I need--and you thought I
wouldn't do it!"
He caught her hand, and kissed it passionately.
"You know it is not that," he said. "I never thought any thing of you
but that you were the noblest woman I knew; but I was not worth so much
hardship--I couldn't bring it on you. But since you love me, I can
wait."
"I never said I loved you! I--I don't."
"I know better," said he, springing up; "but let that go. It is
beginning to rain, and sentiment must give place to reason. How shall
you get into the house?"
"But you must not go away thinking I love you," she said weakly.
"How can you help it?" he returned. "How shall you get back to your
room?"
"If I only could wake Flossy, she'd help me."
"Which is her window?"
"The one over the rosebush."
He took up a handful of pebbles, and threw them lightly against the
panes until Flossy came to the window.
"Who's there?" she called timidly.
"It's I," Patty answered. "Come down."
"What on earth!" began Flossy.
"Come quick, and keep quiet."
"She is coming," Putnam said. "Good-night, Patty. If you knew how I
love you!"
He kissed her hand again, and was gone just in time to escape Flossy.
"How did you hit my window from the door-step?" the latter asked as the
two girls climbed slowly the stairs.
"By sleight of hand," her cousin answered. "Good-night. Thank you very
much. I want to get to bed and to sleep before it begins to lighten any
worse."
But how could she sleep with those two kisses burning like live coals
upon her hand?